- as a product of western culture, I have been nurtured in a naturalistic culture (western culture can explain away most things with scientific reasoning etc).
- as a product of conservative churches and conservative schools, I have been at best skeptical of supernatural things...largely because I did not want to be identified as a pentecostal type.
so I have been thinking (and I think have come to the place) where I have recognized that not only do I have one foot in a hole; but there are at least two holes in my thinking in this regard and I have a foot in each. I am just begining to realize that I have some deficiencies in these areas...and want to continue to explore the question: is God really supernatural (because maybe up to this point in my life He has not been)
3 comments:
The original question was, "Is the God I worship & serve really a supernatural God?" If you mean by "supernatural" that he transcends the natural world, then absolutely. But I think we must distinguish between two views on this matter. The first view God is supernatural in that he transcends the natural world and occasionally acts within it (this is why it is so special when he does). The second is the view that God is always working supernaturally in the world (i.e., miraculously). The former view would entail God normally working through the natural world (because he designed it to function this way) as an aspect of divine providence and occasionally intervening in history by breaking the laws of the natural world. This first view would see the laws of the natural world as tools in God’s providential plan. God is still seen as the ultimate cause of all events (bringing rain for crops, destroying people by natural disasters, etc.) because he designed the laws and the circumstances unto which these events take place.
The second view, in contrast, equates everything that happens in the natural world with direct divine intervention. There are a few problems, I think, with this view. First, what would it mean to say a miracle occurred? We usually understand miracles to be a breaking or suspension of the laws that regulate the natural world by God for some specific purpose. But if everything is attributed to God by direct divine intervention, then this distinction is blurred. How can we tell when God has acted in the world for a specific purpose (such as authenticating a prophet, bringing about new revelation, etc.)? Supernatural acts of God are rare and are the type of things that cannot be explained by natural processes, but point unmistakably to outside influence. So, if we attribute everything to this type of divine intervention, we loose the ability to distinguish God’s providential plans on the one hand, and his special action in history on the other. Second, if we substitute the first view (an orderly natural world which God uses for providential concerns) for the second, it seems that we might start attributing everything to God and reject a robust review of the regularity of the natural world that makes observation, prediction, and science in general even possible.
My view is not naturalistic, because (1) God created the natural world, (2) God uses the orderliness and regularity of the natural world to providentially bring about his plans, and (3) God can and does interact in the natural world (albeit rarely). My view also precludes Deism because of (2) and (3).
Anyways, something to think about.
--Jeff
what he said
ps- if miracles happened all of the time, they'd be called normacles
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